Italy, the land of our ancestors

Politically speaking Italy is divided into Regions and each region includes several provinces. Within each province there are communities (towns or cities) or administrative divisions called “comuni”.

Frazioni (fractions)

Many populated centres administratively depend on other comuni and are known literally as frazioni or frazioni. These comuni have a historic identity and their own culture but they depend on the head comune which governs them with regard to paper work, education, supplies and work among others.

Not all the Italian comuni include one or several frazioni within their jurisdiction. Some Italian frazioni are somewhat autonomous, for example, they may have a civil registry office, a deputy mayor and the chance of their own government regarding basic needs.

Other inhabited centres

There are other inhabited centres defined by the Italian Statistics Office (ISTAT) as a “locality” an area which lack the typical town centre, formed by a group of adjacent and neighbouring houses with at least five families, with streets, lanes, squares, pens, small orchards and small similar pieces of land and scattered houses”. Many times these inhabited centres have their own name and do not constitute a fraction.

In all, there are about 8,100 Italian comuni and 37,000 frazioni and the number of small inhabited places is 16,000.

Before 1860

Before 1860 Italy was not the country we know now but a group of kingdoms governed by different Royal Families. The state which carried out the Unification was the Piedmont-Sardinia Kingdom which by then included the French regions of Saboie and Niza.
Each Italian region lived peculiar historic processes producing typical documents which we will analyze in our website.

In recent history, there have been various important changes in the political division of Italy.

Changes in the political organization of Italy

Regions, provinces, circondari and mandamenti
Name changes
Towns which disappeared: called “the comuni soppressi”
Territorial reorganizations
Chronology of political division

List of Italian towns

It can happen that although we look for information about one Italian comune we may not find anything for two reasons:
- It is a fraction or a populated centre which depends on a comune for its administration.
- Maybe the comune or fraction does not exist anymore or changed its name in the various territorial reorganizations that Italy made.

These searching resources may be useful:

List of Italian Towns
List of renamed cities in Italy

Related Links

• Italy - Wikipedia
• Italian Unification - Wikipedia
• Italy before the unification
• Map of the 19th Century Unification of Italy under Piemontese Rule, showing the Route taken by Garibaldi's soldiers
• Chronology of the Unification of Italy
• The David Rumsey Map Collection was started over 25 years ago and contains more than 150,000 maps. The collection focuses on rare 18th and 19th century maps of North and South America, although it also has maps of the World, Asia, Africa, Europe, and Oceania.
  The collection features over 300 antique maps of Italy